Low public participation, lack of resources key issues in dealing with pollution complaints:CPCB

Extremely low public participation, inadequate response of agencies and lack of resources and infrastructure were among key challenges encountered by the Central Pollution Control Board in addressing pollution-related complaints.

The CPCB in a presentation listed out various steps it was taking to deal with spike in pollution during winter season.

It said inadequate response of agencies in field actions, jurisdiction issues, delay in redressal of grievance, extremely low public participation and lack of resources and infrastructure were the main challenges in addressing the issue.

The CPCB said a biweekly action plan has been developed in collaboration with IIT-Delhi to identify sources of pollution.

"Every 15 days polluting sources change so we thought we should plan in advance what to expect in the next 15 days so we started making biweekly plan and the information we get we keep sharing with different agencies," a senior official said.

The CPCB official said that he expects significant improvement in air quality by control of polluting sources - unpaved roads, industrial emissions among others.

"An overall reduction of about 20 per cent in the emissions from all the sources can bring down the emissions in the entire domain by 15.75 per cent," he said.

The Board said percentage reduction in 2018 compared to 2016 in finer particulate matter (PM2.5) is 14.8 per cent while coarse particulate matter (PM10) is 16.5 per cent.

"Percentage reduction in 2018 compared to 2017 of PM2.5 is 7.3 per cent and PM10 is 8.6 per cent," the official said.

The CPCB also gave data of the number of good, satisfactory, moderate, poor, very poor and severe days between January 1, 2016 to October 15, 2019.

"The number of satisfactory days have increased gradually from 25 days to 58 between January 1, 2016 to October 15, 2019 while moderate air quality days rose from 83 to 114 in the same period," the official said.

He further said that the number of poor days reduced between January 1, 2016 to October 15, 2019 from 107 to 80 and very poor days from 55 to 27 days.

Air Quality Index score between 0 and 50 is considered 'good', 51 and 100 'satisfactory', 101 and 200 'moderate', 201 and 300 'poor', 301 and 400 'very poor', and 401 and 500 'severe.